Wednesday, 22 January 2014

More Irish records from FamilySearch for Ancestry

The collaboration between Ancestry and Family Search is big genealogy news at the moment. Following the initial announcement last September of an agreeement to digitise 1 billion reoords that hadn't been previously been published online, the partners revealed plans yesterday (see press release) to share an additional 1 billion records from 67 countries.

These 'additional' records have already been digitised by FamilySearch; they're not brand-new in the sense that they're making their debut in cyber land (they've been available on FamilySearch for varying amounts of time), but it's good to extend accessibility.

I'm no mathematician, but I reckon that's two billion records joining Ancestry over the next five years. The first fruits of this partnership seem to have landed yesterday, with a whopping number of records uploaded. And when I say whopping, I mean HUGE!

There's no way I'm going to list all the collections making their debut on Ancestry. There're simply too many. I'll just say that if your Irish ancestors took off to Peru, Denmark, Panama, Iceland, Ukraine, Hondurus, India... (you get the picture), and you haven't previously checked FamilySearh, you might like to search Ancestry today.

From what I can see, the Death collection seems to be made up of register transcriptions from the first six years of Irish civil registration.

The Index reference is not provided, but the 51,248 entries seem to relate most of the relevant information from a death certificate, eg Mary Kate Irwin, the child of a postmaster, died 14 June 1870 aged 10, in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare; and Mathew Savage, a married Sub-Agent, died 11 March 1870 in Ballynatray, Templemichael, Co Cork, aged 63. This collection has been available on FamilySearch for nearly a year.

The Marriage collection is confusing. Ancestry say this collection holds 1,473,590 records. FamilySearch count it differently: take your pick from 424,444 and 430,834, depending which page you go to. But even more daft is the fact this collection holds records from 1864 to 1870 only. I can't see any sign of marriages from before those dates, and the wiki table of entries per county doesn't show any, either. As with the Death collection above, this set of records is made up of register transcriptions from the first six years of Irish Civil Registration and the Index reference is not provided. The records set is not complete; while all counties are represented, their coverage varies.

Entries relate most of the relevant information from a death certificate, eg Cornelius Santry marrying a 17-year-old Anne Whetton, the daughter of John Whetton, on 10 Jan 1865, in Timoleague, Co Cork. (Sadly, this young bride and groom, a coastguard, drowned in Dungarvan harbour three years later.)

Researchers with Irish family that emigrated to Britain are also well served by the latest additions to Ancestry.co.uk. These include 13 collections for England, most of them parish registers, four for Wales, two for Scotland, four for GB/UK, four for the Isle of Man and one for Channel Islands.

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Welcome to Irish Genealogy News

Irish genealogy research is famous for being difficult, if not impossible. This reputation isn't entirely deserved, although there can be some fundamental difficulties in discovering your Irish ancestry, particularly if you don't know where your ancestors lived. That's why I launched my website, Irish Genealogy Toolkit. It's a free online guide to Irish family history research, and it's designed to helpyou to find your heritage.

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